1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to graphical processing systems and drivers. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to display mode list having display modes supported by the graphical processing systems and drivers.
2. Related Art
A driver is used to control the graphical processing system (or graphics card) in a computer system. The graphical processing system renders an image to display on a display device according to a display mode that is selected by the user. Typically, the graphical processing system supports a variety of display modes that are included in a display mode list. The display mode list generally is dependent on the graphical processing unit (or graphics processor chip) of the graphical processing system. The display mode list associated with a particular graphical processing unit is usually different from the display mode list associated with another graphical processing unit.
Typically, when the driver for the graphical processing system is installed on a computer system, the appropriate display mode list is also installed on the computer system. The display mode list may be part of an INF file, which is a text file divided into different types of formatted sections. During execution, the operating system of the computer system may store the display mode list in the registry.
FIG. 1A illustrates a portion of a first conventional display mode list 100A. As illustrated in FIG. 1A, the first conventional display mode list 100A includes a header, a color bit depth, a resolution, a refresh rate, and a chip ID. The color bit depth represents the number of color bits per pixel. The resolution represents horizontal pixel H and vertical pixel V numbers. The chip ID represents the graphical processing unit to which the display mode list is associated. The refresh rates, which follow the color bit depth and the resolution, represent a list of refresh rates available/supported given the specific values for the color bit depth and the resolution. Moreover, the first conventional display mode list 100A also includes a mode type which indicates whether the graphical processing unit supports spanning the image across two display devices. For example, if the mode type is standard, the image is displayed on a single display device. If the mode type is vertical spanning mode, the image is displayed on two vertically stacked display devices, doubling the vertical resolution. Additionally, if the mode type is horizontal spanning mode, the image is displayed on two horizontally stacked display devices, doubling the horizontal resolution. Similarly, FIG. 1B illustrates a portion of a second conventional display mode list 100B associated with a different graphical processing unit. As illustrated in FIG. 1B, the second conventional display mode list 100B includes a header, a color bit depth, a resolution, a refresh rate, a chip ID, and a mode type.
The first conventional display mode list 100A and the second conventional display mode list 100B can be very large in this flat or raw format. This can create problems in the registry if the operating system fails to provide enough storage space for these conventional display mode lists 100A and 100B. In particular, these problems become more severe if the driver, which is installed on the computer system, is based on a unified driver architecture. A driver that is based on a unified driver architecture supports a variety of graphical processing units to provide both forward and backward compatibility across the graphical processing units. Hence, the display mode lists for the variety of graphical processing units supported by the driver are installed in the computer system, creating a large display mode list that can be several megabytes in size.